Originally Posted by dteowner
Containing many of the defining elements of an RPG? Hard to dispute it, even if you want to be a genre snob.

Trouble is that defining a genre by elements that can be shared by so many other genres only ends in one thing: the one happening currently, that is most games are RPGs, soft core RPGs.

The only thing that characterizes unambiguously a RPG is the focus on role playing.
What is used to achieve role playing is secondary.
And the quality of a RPG is measured by the quality of the role playing it allows.

Since it has wheels, doors and engines, it must be a car as wheels, doors and engines are defining elements of a car.